Ferric Manor
by Mithrigil
Summary: He had enlisted Yuber to his side for life, but Albert had never presumed he would die old...


**Ferric Manor**

**_a foray into Genso Suikoden III_**

_by Mithrigil Galtirglin_

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The mansion was staffed with invisible retainers, very few of whom had ever been human. They milled or creeped or skittered through the halls of Ferric Manor, plugging leaks in the roofs, cathetering the leaf-flooded gutters, or repairing the erosion of the docks. They and their tools were lost from view in all but the most pounding rain, and even then the water encasing their bodies formed them into shapes so strange that no human eye would have suspected amiss until it was too late.

Albert Silverberg was very old; a hundred and thirteen years, a month ago. His invisible staff did not care. Yuber did not care. Even Albert himself did not care. He had stopped giving a thought to his own birthdays at a hundred and one. He had outlived his brother, most of his brother's children, and the three bastards Albert himself had sired. His one legitimate son was still alive, wherever he was.

Yuber was older still, but that neither showed nor mattered. He stood, now, beside an open window, letting the rain pelt the polished window-sill and rake down the curtains in heavy tatters. The water slithered down the carved and varnished wood, pooling at Yuber's black boots and dampening the hem of his slacks. He wore black, as ever, from the tips of his gloves, to the nape of his neck, to the heels of those boots. His braid, perhaps longer, perhaps not, was still fair.

Albert's hair had ceased to be red long ago, but even now had not ceased to be. It reached his shoulders in dry whiteness, though his eyebrows still held a red hair or two. He wore a monocle over his right eye; the left still saw clearly, but the right was whitened and withered with cataracts. If he stood he would still be straight-backed and six feet tall, a full three inches shorter than he once was; but he rarely stood at all anymore, as his legs were very weak. He required a cane. The one he used most often was silver from peg to hilt, set with emeralds, and it housed a short-sword. He could no longer lift it for more time than it took to step.

As the rain came down in sheets, Albert sat in his bed, surrounded by pillows, and wrote in his journal. He was blanketed chest-high for the cold, and sweatered and scarved through the habits he could not break. That habit seemed to have carried to Yuber, who wore a high-necked black sweater as well, though he cared not for such obtrusive trappings as scarves. It was night, and late at night, which meant only that the clouds were a slightly darker grey. The room was filled with candles, some hooded, most not, to aid Albert's eyes.

Outside, the familiar lightning of Iluya flashed across the sky, to the east where the capitol island was, and the clash was followed by the even more familiar thunder. Albert, without pausing in his writing, asked, "Will you ever admit to learning from me, Yuber?" His voice was like trotting hooves on cobblestone, broken and authoritative.

Lightning flashed again, closer this time, and Yuber chuckled to himself. "Heh. What have I learned from you?" He countered, his eyes narrow on the rain.

The skies rumbled, and Albert finished the entry in his journal. He set the pen down on the deep red coverlets beside him, and shut the volume with a spidery hand. "I do not presume to fully understand you, but I have been ninety years in your company, and my memory has not failed me. You are changed," the old man said, "and it is on my account. Will you admit it?"

Yuber sprang at him from the window, twin swords drawn. A bolt streaked across the sky behind where he had been. Albert did not flinch, for he was used to this display. The blades held, crossed, one on Albert's left cheek, the other along a deep, white wrinkle in his throat. A winding vein cast its reflection in the second sword's flat, but neither weapon nor flesh wavered. Albert looked sidelong at Yuber through his good eye, and the bad eye turned with it out of habit; Yuber leant one knee onto the bed, but kept the other braced on the carpet.

"Your skin is older now," the demon said. "It takes more time to mend."

"This is true," Albert said, locking his working eye on Yuber's silver one.

Said skin bled quickly when Yuber cut it. The gash was not deep, but the blood in Albert's ancient cheek seemed rather eager to escape. Albert did not so much as gasp. Yuber still held the second sword at Albert's throat, unsmiling. He let the thunderclap pass. "But you don't fear death as you once did."

"I feared only death in obscurity," Albert reminded the demon. "I am no longer obscure, so there is no need to fear death at all." However much he longed to at that moment, he did not break eye-contact with the Chaosbearer, not even to appraise the wealth that surrounded them. This island, this mansion, was the result and home of years of accomplishment; blood for knowledge, bones for bricks, and final breaths for fame.

Yes, Albert was the most powerful man in the world-as-he-knew-it, without so much as a True Rune to claim his credit. He had built and razed empires with a few well-placed words of command. He held in his thrall (or consent, in Yuber's case) legions of retainers, acolytes, adherents, knowing and unassuming both. Unlike every other major player in his league, Albert was mortal, and he had held his own. He had surpassed even his own expectations. He had enlisted Yuber to his side for life, but Albert had never presumed that he would die old.

A bolt struck the mansion's spire, and Yuber smiled. "Good. So if I slit your throat here, you won't pitch a fit." He leaned a touch closer, raising his black heel from the carpet, but the sword remained level on Albert's varicose skin.

"You don't have to," Albert whispered, almost as still as the sword. "I know you poisoned these blades." He lifted his stark-skinned hand from the blankets and raised it to his bleeding cheek, and the dark cloth of his sweater slid down his bony wrist like the rain on the windowsill. "I'll die tonight," he whispered under the crackling skies. "Thank you." The blood caught on his wrinkled fingertips and in the corner-cup of his chapped lips; this deception, on Yuber's part, was admittance enough for the old man.

"I always knew poison," Yuber whispered back, snarling like the thunder.

"What I taught you was _subtlety,_" the old man corrected in the same hiss as before.

In an indignant flicker, Yuber drew back the remaining sword. The cut on Albert's throat was even shallower than the one on his cheek, just under his folding chin. Lightning filled Albert's monocle, and the man, unsurprised, did not even move in recoil. Wind raced through the room with water on its heels and doused the candles, batting Yuber's golden braid and Albert's white hair in a jagged fury. The heavy curtains and canopies did not know whether to sag or wave in the onslaught.

His eyes still locked on Albert's, Yuber licked the blood off the second sword, then lowered the weapon and launched himself at Albert's cheek and kissed the first cut fiercely.

Albert, weak, had to let his gnarled hand down to the pillows to support himself, but did not otherwise bend. The old man smiled, shuddered, and closed his eyes. The thunder and the gales railed on outside, drenching the invisible servants and the whipping standards of the manor. Albert was in pain--Yuber's tongue was hot and sharp and unrefined as a blade two seconds on the anvil--but the old man laughed hysterically. His heavy scarf fell to his chest and the covers. His bloody chin was raised and his chest was heaving, and his Adam's-apple looked full ready to burst out of his withered neck like a gopher.

Yuber spat out a trail of blood and pried himself away with the lightning. There was a deep dent in the coverlets where his knee had been, and a few stray hairs wrapped around one of the canopy posts, courtesy of the relentless wind. Albert did not stop cackling. It was a choking, almost noiseless laugh by now, as if he had never really learned how to.

The old man did not die that night, nor the next, most likely because Yuber had sucked some of the poison out of the wound. He spent his final hours in pain, sleepless, but died with an almost contented smirk on his face. Whether that was beholden to his feelings on the matter, or due to the toxins flooding his brain, the one that found and analyzed his corpse could not be certain. Pesmerga burned the Silverberg and scattered the ashes at sea, then resumed his chase.

The servants maintained the manor as per their contract.

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End file.
